There is something Pynchonesque about the talent Australian film directors Michael and Peter Spierig enlist for their productions. Mungo McKay inUndead. Sahaj Dumpleton and Willem Dafoe inDaybreakers. Now, Sarah Snook stars opposite Ethan Hawke inPredestination, a clever, tragic and hugely entertaining film that sees the Adelaide actress deliver an outstanding performance. The film is the latest in a string of Spierig stories whose roots run deep in speculative fiction, but unlike the majority of contemporary horror and sci-fi releases the great appeal of their movies is the ability to pitch classics of the genre in entirely unexpected ways.
“Peter and I grew up in the ’80s, in the days of the video nasties,” Michael says. “There were all those VHS movies that came out like Evil Dead, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw, all of that stuff. Granted, we were very, very young, but we managed to get our hands on them and take in everything. So we definitely love horror, have always loved sci-fi. I think there’s so much room to experiment within those genres, and we also admire so many filmmakers that have started in the genre. People like Peter Jackson, [David] Cronenberg, Sam Raimi, all those guys. We sort of see their trajectory, and hope to emulate that to some degree.”
Like those directors, The Spierig Brothers’ films have certainly grown more polished and assured as their reputation has risen, but their fascination and appreciation of the genre has in no way diminished.
“We pushed really hard to ensure that…” Peter begins, then trails off. Given the unfair rap that horror and sci-fi films tend to receive, it’s no surprise he takes time to consider his reply. “Look, it’s very easy for the gimmick of time travel paradoxes to take over a film, but we were striving to do something a little more. And it’s so interesting to see introspective characters in this type of movie too; you just don’t see that, you don’t often really see actual science fiction. We’re thrilled that we were able to do something a little different. And it’s difficult to get films like this made because people are so preconditioned to think what this genre should be, and to push the barriers a little bit is so exciting for us.”
And, at the risk of sounding sycophantic, it’s exciting for the audience as well. Predestination is a genuinely good film – the performances from Hawke, Snook, and (too briefly) Noah Taylor are all compelling; the pacing is tight; perhaps even more importantly, the film is simply interesting. After watching a media screening, I overheard several people laughing in self-deprecating fashion that they had not understood what it was all about. Though by no means a linear story (involving as it does notions of time, love and fate), Predestination is not an obtuse or confusing film. It is not difficult to understand and enjoy, yet it does demand a certain level of engagement that is lacking from a lot of cinema today.
“You have to cater to… hmmm,” Michael laughs. “The ‘lowest common denominator’ is not the term I’m trying to use, but you have to appeal to the broadest audience you can, and that often means simplifying the story. We had total freedom in this project, we were answering to no-one and got to make the film that we wanted to make. But I really enjoy a film that makes you think. I think there are certain films that require repeat viewing, and I think a film like ours lends itself to that. There are so many layers to it that make so much more sense once you know how it all unfolds.”
“If somebody said they just totally didn’t get it, I’d find that a little surprising,” Peter adds. “But not only that, we’ve also had the opposite – people saying they knew every twist that was going to happen, which I also find a little difficult to believe,” he chuckles. “I can understand that it does have that reaction, and you’re right, it does require the audience to be engaged. I know there are plenty of movies out there where you go to them simply to switch your brain off.”
The film gains an added layer of intellectual credibility given it’s based on a story by Robert A. Heinlein, whose writings have previously crossed over into Hollywood to varying success (compare the popularity of Starship Troopers to, say, the questionable 1994 Donald Sutherland flick The Puppet Masters). In this instance, the source material is short story All You Zombies, a title which may have worked for Lucio Fulci but not quite as well here. It is also notable given it took Heinlein just 24 hours to write.
“It was very, very quick,” Michael says. “You think of the intricacies of what the plot is, and you get a sense of his mind and how clever he was. Turning that into a feature script took a little more than a day, I’ll tell you that for sure,” he laughs. “But it was a fairly quick process. We got it to the point where we had a shooting draft in maybe six months, and in the grand scheme of moviemaking that’s pretty fast.”
“Michael might find a piece of material, I might find a piece of material, and if there’s passion there, then we’ll go after it no matter what,” Peter says. “And that’s across all different genres, all different styles. It’s just whatever story grabs us, whatever makes us passionate, that’s what we’ll run with.”
This marks the second time The Spierig Brothers have worked with Ethan Hawke, having formerly cast him as the vampiric lead in the dystopian Daybreakers. Seeing as Hawke himself seems drawn more and more to genre films these days (Sinister, The Purge), you wonder how long it will be before he is officially promoted to ‘Spierig Muse’. Michael laughs.
“We had such a good time working with him on Daybreakers. We wrote the script [for Predestination] and sent it to him without really having the film at all set up or financed. He just fell in love with the story and wanted to know what part he was playing, but we weren’t entirely sure. It sort of evolved over months of auditioning a lot of actors and deciding the path we were going to take with the characters. Were we going to get two actors to play the parts that Sarah ultimately played, or could we find one actress to play both? Obviously the most interesting option was to have one actor play both. We were so fortunate to find Sarah, she’s just remarkable.”
With the commercial appeal of classic monsters today stronger than ever – one need look no further than the Twilight franchise or The Walking Dead – reimagining established horrors along more cerebral lines is not without risk. The Spierig Brothers seem interested in more than whatever creature happens to currently be in vogue, but they are certainly aware of material that treads a similar path.
“Vampires in particular are the oldest of the movie monsters,” Peter says. “There are so many different versions. [Guillermo] del Toro’s new show [The Strain] I haven’t seen yet, Twilight I’ve seen… well,” he laughs, “I’ve seen enough of it to know what it is. It’s obviously something that is not what we would spend our time watching. But I loved The Lost Boys. I watched the From Dusk Till Dawn series, and that was interesting. The good thing about the genre is that it does have all of this room to experiment and play; you can do different things. With Daybreakers, we were trying to show a completely different world. And our vampires didn’t sparkle, that’s for sure.”
Predestination (dir. The Spierig Brothers) is in cinemas Thursday August 28.
